


ellipsis

by sazzafraz



Series: a story worth watching will always lose all control [2]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Character Study, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Supernatural Elements, the gap year
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2018-12-25 16:09:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12039471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazzafraz/pseuds/sazzafraz
Summary: The omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues. (Or, Richard Strand gets a dog, renews some friendships and deals with things. Maybe.)





	1. An Ellipsis In Time

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to me. LISTEN TO ME. I grew up surrounded by academics and if you try to tell ME that Richard Strand Bonafide Straight White Man Who Went to Yale doesn't???? have a lot of friends who think he's full of shit?????????? WELL I AM SORRY but he DOES. They love him but they have competed for funding and being the actual antichrist won't stop them from slitting his throat in front of the dean. You think they fear GOD??? TIaMAT??? THOMAS WARREN????? no they're academics in the 'soft sciences' they constantly live in that blackout zone of always needing to finish a paper. and they enjoy that feeling. there are no demons because hell is writing a paper with your ex who never got over it. 
> 
> Listen. Listen. Richard Strand has dozens of people to whom he will always be 'that guy who never remembered his weed tolerance and somehow fucked Lucija Juric despite not speaking her language and calling her names in front of the whole bar'. Listen to me. Richard Strand has dozens of photos of his unfortunate long hair/beard phase that CROSSES OVER with the summer he lost his mind took too many courses and had to do cocaine to get through his finals. there are bell bottoms and chest hair. there are dozens of people who only know him as this man. 
> 
> he is a SELF MADE MAN and one of the mountains he has climbed is the teenage acne that lasted until after he finished his first degree those fucking liars.

“Dickson,” Salim McConnell says over his glass of scotch. “What the _fuck_ does radio on demand even mean? You can’t demand it. That’s the fucking point.”

“Internet,” Richard points out. He wore black on black to the which was a mistake. Unlike the Pacific Northwest it is warm in Florida. It’s bloody Florida.

Salim sneers. “I’m british. I get to say what is and isn’t radio.”

Ah, this. “Technically-”

“People who don’t have to publish papers before March do not get to deride those of us whose citizenship depends on it.” Salim laughs. “And I’m still waiting on your critique old friend. It was a bloody close call. I think I had a legitimate vision from a higher plane at the end.”

Richard snorts.

Salim wiggles his eyebrows. “You’ll owe me a million.”

Thank fucking god for the niche interests of academia. No one in this room listens to _The Black Tapes_ . At best they think he’s doing the good work and spreading his intellect to the masses. At worst they think he’s gone off the deep end. Granted most of the truly militant believe that _off campus_ is the wild west. The internet might as well be mars. Thank god for Salim and his archeological bent. Yes, it’s mostly museum work and conservation, but it’s about as close as he’s getting to a war buddy in this room of gatekeepers and theory mad crones.

Ah, that’s probably too unkind, they’re here to mourn one of the greats after all.

Charles Morzik was an unassuming philosophy major who wandered through a half dozen fields of study before finding a home in literature. This wouldn’t have been a problem if he was merely some wandering intellectual dipping his feet into a dozen academic pools. No, Morzik was an originator, a one man hurricane that left dazzling insights in his wake. Richard was lucky enough to claw his way into one of his philosophy courses when he was at Yale. The same course he met Salim.   

(He remembers telling Alex he’d passed. She’d looked briefly shocked and then, absurdly, close to tears. “The author of An Ellipsis In Time?” she asked. He’d been worried that she’d need comfort. Worse that he’d feel the pull to provide. Alex sniffled. “That bastard is the reason I developed an ulcer in my second year. I hope _he_ has to read his damn book.” Proving that some things may change but he will never quite get Alex Reagan.)

The personal invitation was unexpected. His wife, Camilla, was exceptionally fond of Coralee, as many were, and her disappearance led to him pushing away anyone who could commiserate with him. He went from regularly producing work across many fields to a narrow focus on the paranormal. Given Salim’s friendliness, Camilla’s personal invitation, it seems he’s forgiven for that in this corner of his life.

Camilla and Charles’ Florida home is awful. It’s overstuffed with Camilla’s taxidermy collection, Charles fondness for esoteric trinkets and that fussy old people smell Camilla’s Jo Malone candles can’t cover up. The beautiful ocean view only serves to highlight how _ugly_ their decor is. Their house is a medieval nightmare of small rooms, heavy carpets and leather couches. The scents of a dozen sweaty academics doesn’t help.

Salim came in his father’s kilt and Richard is so jealous he could kill him for it. Salim’s well known penchant for going commando be _damned._

“They’re not selling his collections, you know.” Salim pours them both more scotch. “The complete lunatic left a piece to everyone he thought still had a brain left in their skull.”

“The information age being the biggest mistake in modern history, yes, I read that book.” It was a much more nuanced argument, but Richard was _also_ on that email chain and he remembers the hissing from the intellectual version of the selfie generation. “And we made the cut? I’m sure there’s a backhanded compliment in there.”

Salim laughs. “My friend, all you needed to do to get people to stop teasing you was wear a pair of sneakers, or Doc Martens, or anything non-bespoke. You are a fashion snob. And rather an unreasonable one.”

“I don’t see what good taste has to do with it.”

“Exactly, my friend. Exactly.”

Richard smirks at his friend over his glass of scotch. He’s given in and removed the jacket, rolled up his sleeves and loosened the tie. It’s been a very long time he’s been in company comfortable enough to do that. Salim is an old companion, one with no strings but his occasional haranguing for a reference or a project partner. Salim crosses his legs -thank god he wore underwear- tips the line of his neck back to reveal his adam’s apple and shifts his long hair over his shoulder. Richard has a brief memory of the one and only time he grew his hair out. It was never as nice as Salim’s salt and peppered curls. His friend cracks his knuckles over his ‘legitimately earned’ old man pooch and regards Richard with a lazy smile. “You’re in love again.”

Richard splutters. “Excuse me?”

“I had to hold you up while you drunkenly sang to Coralee’s window remember? Our voices meshed beautifully.”

“They did not.”

“Love is your only settler, Richard.” Salim considers the scotch only a shade or two later than his skin. Richard swallows his snide response. Salim lost the love of his life five years ago. She was a photographer trying to end forced marriages in her hometown one photo at a time. Richard missed that funeral but he’s sent Salim a boquet of his wife's favourite flowers every month since. The first years are the hardest, and unlike himself Salim finds peace in missing her. He’ll never understand that.

“Terra Nullius?”

“Terra fullius. Just as I was happiest with a companion as absurd as myself. You did best when you had someone to remind you that you’re human. Not that dear Coralee was ever that.” Salim sighs, his accent grows thicker with every sentence. “We haven’t been as close as we once were but I still know you. You’re in love again.”

He considers his own scotch. “Any advice?”

“No.” Salim shrugs. “Is there any I could give you? If we’re using you as a model I have another two years before I get drunk at a conference in Oslo and sleep my way through the ornithology department of the local university.”

“Research group. They were attached to the...biology department?”

“I bet.” Salim wiggles his eyebrows. “Sorry but I’m not qualified anymore to talk on that.”

They drink in silence. Around them the wake dies down. Camilla floats through in her long gauzy dress. She was always the resolute one in her marriage. After her husband’s passing she looks wrecked and wrung out. He sympathises. Like he said, the first years are hardest.      

“Richard. Salim.” She pronounces in her precise South African accent. She passes them identical salmon coloured envelopes. “These are your bequeathments. We thought long and hard about these and I will not hear about any swapping or refusals.”

Salim opens his first. He snorts. “His collection of rodent skulls? Lovely.”

Which means Richard is getting his collection of rodent asses. He opens his and resigns himself to explaining this to the TSA. He reads his letter. Rodent ass would have been better.     

“Excuse me,” Richard growls, “but he left me _what?_ ”

\--

Desmond Reginald Sisyphus the Third; a Very Morose Great Dane. He’s tucked away under the shade of some trees in the yard on a royal purple floaty bed. He’s an unusual brindle colour with surprisingly deep brown eyes. Desmond does not so much look at, as look past Richard and Salim. Salim for his part is too busy hanging on Richard’s shoulder and stifling his giggles to be helpful.  

He rubs his eyes. He’s far too drunk for this. “I have no idea how this happened.”

“You strike me as a cat person.” Salim agrees.

Camilla is behind them on the patio. She’s drinking a glass of white wine glaring at the back of Richard’s head. The elite of the elite lounge behind her, steadily getting drunker and no doubt sending pictures to the alumni facebook page they’re all a part of. _No take backs._ He wishes he’d stayed home, potential end of the world be damned.

Salim claps him on the back. “Better you then me, my friend.”

\--

“Twitter is why everyone thinks you’re an asshole.” Ruby says first thing. “To be super, duper clear.”

“Thank you.” He rearranges himself in the car seat, popping one leg over the other. The phone is on the dashboard so he can use his tablet to coordinate his schedule. “Why are we discussing this.”

“Because you tweeted last night.”

“That’s not a word.”

Ruby makes an unhappy noise. “Mr Strand.”

He rolls his eyes. “Oh for fucks sake.” Ruby laughs at him down the line. “I- Yes, Ruby, fine I tweeted. What’s the problem?”

“Calling Emily Dumont a bridge troll?”

Not very feminist of him, yes. He shoots her an apology email because, frankly, she doesn’t deserve his ire outside of the professional realm. She replies with _fuck you_ and then _sad to hear about Charles I’ll let you off this time._ He sighs, rubbing his nose. Half of him wants to say more, to apologise better but it’s tempered by his stronger self. Why should he? He’s worked for years to become this person, and this person comes with spikes.

“Anything else?”

“Alex.”

“Anything _else?_ ”

“Heard you got a dog.” Ruby stops typing. “Olivia said so.”

Oh _Olivia_. “Still talking?” Damn that girl and her friendliness.

“I think she may single white female me in a couple of years.” Ruby sounds not unhappy about this. “And she’s so goddamn cute.”

Olivia is one of the most genuine, sweet natured human beings he’s ever met. When she called to ask if he’d be her reference for an internship he checked three times with a colleague in ethics if it was appropriate. After much mocking he said it was probably fine, as long as it went through her guardian. Ergo he now has a weird pseudo paternal relationship conducted through Vilde’s work email. It’s easy to be kind to her. Even easier to care for her when she lives in NYC with a pathologically overprotective aunt. It would be difficult for any of Richard’s bullshit to get past Vilde Magnusson.

She asked him if he was alright. He was drunk enough to send her a picture of the dog. In the morning he was sober enough to put DO NOT CALL next to her name. The girl already has an unfortunate crush on him. He needs better boundaries. That, and Vilde monitors her social media. Her hashtag support of his work is lovely but embarrassing.  

“A dog.” She laughs. Why is everyone laughing? “Really?”

He grunts. Ruby continues to type. She has a policy: answers beget answers.

“Ruby?” He folds. “I need you to rent me a new car. And text me instructions about dog care.”

“I’ll ask Liv shall I?” Ruby quips. Half an hour later he has a new car with pet insurance.

\--

He packs Desmond into the car under the watchful, disapproving gaze of Camilla Danes. She is still in some long gauzy material, still holding an alcoholic beverage. Desmond looks woefully behind him as he steps up and into the harness Richard had to buy. He lies down in a huge warm lump, sighs and goes to sleep. Richard makes his goodbyes, even to Salim’s hungover shirtless lump on the front steps, and tries to get away before Charles can bequeath him something else difficult and unexpected.

He can not, however, leave without saying goodbye to the hostess. “Darling.” Camilla pats his cheek maternally. He remembers that she’d been fond of him too. “If I hear that you gave away that dog I will insure that you end up on every improv comedy mailing list from here to Antarctica.”

“Ms Danes-”

“Richard.” Her voice turns to steel. She very careful cups his cheek. “My husband gave you that dog. My lovely _dead_ husband whom I will miss every day til Margery finally figures out how to poison me at the charity luncheon. I couldn’t get that man to walk a straight line if his life depended on it and if he could pull his dementia addled brain together enough to give you a dog _you will keep that fucking dog._ ”

He swallows. “Yes. Of course.”

“Good boy. I’ll see you next year at the alumni event, shall I?”

He has never, ever wished more for the apocalypse to be true. He would rather die than spend another hour in Camilla Danes company. “I’ll look after the dog.”

Camilla arches a perfect brow, drinking instead of commenting.

NPR blasts out of the speakers as he drives away from the most bewildering funeral he’s ever been to. It would be the weirdest thing that happened to him in a decade but Alex Reagan left him eleven messages and his life is just a mix, now. The radio switches to a story he couldn't care less about -the presidents an asshole, more at eleven- so he pulls over at a rest stop and swipes through his phone for something more interesting. Desmond perks up and he realises that he’s going to have to walk this dog. So he grabs the leash that came with the dog and walks across the empty parking lot to a green strip.

There’s a fuzziness to the area. The liminality of rest stops creeping in around the edge.

Desmond finishes his business. He’ll have to organise pet accommodation. He texts that to Ruby and when she doesn’t respond with her usual alacrity he calls.    

“You have reached the office of Thomas Warren-”

“What-”

“-please hold for transfer, Dr Strand.” The phone beeps followed by a jazzy version of elevator music. A pleasant voice cuts in.“This is Warren.”

“What have you done to my phone?”

“Just a little bug. Cutting edge technology.” Warren sighs, the creak of a chair in the background. “All your calls will reroute to here. Now, what can _I_ do for you?”

“Are you serious?”

“Doctor-”

“No.” Richard pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is absurd. Even you must think this is _stupid._ Whatever point you’re trying to make is lost when you pull these theatrics.”

“You’re the same then.” Warren murmurs. “Think for a moment what you could do with-”

Richard hangs up.

Thomas Warren has turned his phone into a very expensive brick. He tries texting Ruby but the message bounces. After a moment Warren sends a message on Alex’s thread - _think about it._

Great.

Luckily he’s about twenty minutes from a friend’s house. Friend may be a stretch. But they’re former colleagues and they left things well. Both Amanda and her husband are career academics with a speciality in early Christianity. Her with a focus on the conversion of religions across the Middle East and him with a focus on its movement through Europe. The small house they share holds a farm, a generator and thousands of dollars worth of historical texts. It’s a wonder they haven’t been robbed. Then again, they would have to both _care_ and be willing to find two off the grid academics. Luckily Richard drove all of them to a convention about a decade ago and retains a visceral muscle memory for the terrifying winding driveway that goes on for a mile and a half before their house.    

Desmond snuffles as they climb back in the car. Richard turns the radio back to NPR and drives.

\--

“Good god.” Amanda Fairweather says in her crisp british accent. “I thought Salim was lying.”

“He was very drunk.” Stanley comments with a more local tone. “I thought he was just making fun of you, Dickson.”

“Unfortunately not.”

Amanda squints at him. “Why are you wearing all black in Florida?”

A young woman with Amanda’s red hair leans against the doorway. Her thin lips turn up. “He has an aesthetic.”

“This is Molly, our daughter. She’s moving across state and staying with us for a night or two.” Amanda frowns. “What on earth happened Richard?”

“My phone died and I need to make some calls. I’m sorry to intrude but-”

“Of course.” Stanley comes off the porch and fetches Desmond. The dog looks up at him with his sad eyes. “I’ll get this fella sorted. We have a phone but it’s a landline.”

“I promise not to make any international calls.” The corner of Richard’s mouth perks up. Amanda once left him with near to a thousand dollars worth of cross continental calls because his phone happened to be closer than hers when they shared a desk at an alumni event. She’d noticed after the first one but at that point she was on a roll. Amanda is such a singularly focused researcher that Richard had found it hard to be mad at her.

“Shut up,” Amanda says hotly. “I’ll get you some tea.”

“Please don’t.” He and Molly say at the same time. Amanda is famously bad at making tea.

Stanley laughs. “I’ll settle the dog _and_ make tea, then.”   

Amanda and Stanley’s house is half shed-half bunker. They were living off the grid on their own generators long before doomsday preppers, Big barn downs attach to what he knows is a million dollar eco-home worthy of a magazine. If he needed a description of his friends that would be it: a million dollar wrapped in burlap. He can smell the compost, the kombucha and the comforting smell of ink and paper. Stanley doesn’t believe in technology. Amanda prefers to do everything the hard way. There’s a physical memory to standing in their open plan living room. He can see the horse Stanley rescued from someone’s yard grazing through the wide open back doors. He can see himself seven and a half years after Coralee left him, sweating through his third shirt of the day as he debated the merits of reference systems with Stanley. Amanda rushed into the room, hissed at them for being too loud, and then returned to her Hut of Solitude to play Rage Against the Machine even louder.      

Amanda tinkers in her kitchen a decade and change older now. Her hair has faded from its brilliant crimson to a comfortable red gold. She has more weight on her hips but the way she fixes his tea is the same. The way she hands him the cup handle first, her fingers on the boiling porcelain the same. She hands her daughter a cup too, a vague look he recognises coming across her face. She dashes off to her Hut to write down whatever insight she’s had.

Molly snorts and shares a commiserating glance with him. “I listen to the podcast you know.” She flops down across a sofa. More thirteen than thirty. “It’s about the length of my old commute.”

“Why not listen to something more...” He trails off. More what? Reasonable? Rational? Not off the rails?

“My parents have a picture of all of you from about fifteen years ago. Someone recommend it to me and I thought, that weird guy my parents are friends with?” Molly laughs. “I tried to get them to listen but, you know. They’re writing a paper. I might get them to engage with reality in another year or so when they start looking for publishers. I have to ask,” Molly says in that tone that drives him insane. If you say it like that you _don’t_ have to ask. “You and Alex...”

“Miss Fairweather.” His teeth grind together. “We are colleagues.”

“Right.” Molly rolls her eyes. “I’m a public servant. I can assure you Mr Strand, that not a one of my colleagues has ever sounded the way you do when you talk to her.”

“Miss Fairweather-”

“Molly.” She corrects. “It was Mrs Fuller for a while but, well. Have you considered maybe reconsidering some things?” he begins to cut in but Molly isn’t having it. “Again. I _listen to the podcast._ Whoever the fuck is on that show isn’t the same man that drove my parents across two states in our shitty electric car. I grew up in that thing it’s an eco-terrorist death trap. They still bring up that thing with the ducks. It’s none of my business but if my husband came back from the dead I _might_ consider calling some of my _friends._ ”

Before he can reply Amanda bustles back in. “I’m sorry Richard.” She wipes her hands down her pant fronts, an old sign of anxiety. “There’s nowhere to fix your phone near here and Stanley and I can’t possible leave-”

“I’ll drive him to the train station. It’s like a one stop shop, they’ll have burner phones at least.” Molly offers. “That way you can keep working on your papers.”

“Thank you darling.” Her mother kisses her on the cheek. “Have a nice trip Richard. Call again soon, huh?”

Richard smiles. “Break a leg, Amanda.” He slides a look at Molly. “I’ll...think about it.”

\--

“Sorry,” Molly says insincerely from where she’s leaning against the entrance to the train station. She’d cheerfully taken the poor shop worker for everything he had. Security even came in at one point. “No generation twenty sevens in Fuck Off, Backwater County.”

Richard palms his new knockoff phone that barely has service let alone the apps and tricks he’s familiar with. “I imagine you have to get those air dropped in.”

“You’re not so bad _Dickson._ ” Molly cheerfully waves at the local law enforcement. He scowls back. “What’s with the nickname, anyway?”

He sighs. “Your mother,” he says longsufferingly, “has very bad taste in friends. She also likes blind dates.”

“Which friend?”

“Lucy Blunt.”

“Witch Blunt? Oh my god. You slept with her. That’s-” She laughs. “Sorry, but she’s my godmother. I grew up with her. She’s awful, what were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t.”

“I’m sure.” Molly purrs. “Well, let’s go get your car, Dr Strand. I refuse to call you that knowing where it came from. Although it’s not all bad. She only calls the men she respects mean spirited nicknames.”

The first thing he does with his new phone is text Ruby to let his priority contact list know his new number. She texts him back _??? What was the first album I made you listen to on repeat?_ It was Space Oddity and he is still insulted that Ruby thought he _didn’t know who David Bowie was_. Those were _his_ wild years not hers. The second thing he does is log into his email and download spotify. He was looking for something interesting to listen to in the first place, fuck Thomas Warren.

“My parents have a wedding in Seattle next year.” Molly says apropos of nothing.

His mouth twitches. “Would they appreciate you arranging this for them?”

“I love them but if daddy wasn’t born rich they’d be living like...academics.” Richard laughs. Molly scowls. “Damn it. You know what I mean. They’re happiest in the Hut writing books fifteen hundred people at most care about. They won’t notice if one of their friends doesn’t talk to them for five years. They won’t care. I care. So I talk for them.”

“You’re good people Molly Fairweather.” That was the first thing he ever said to her mother unbelievably drunk in her dorm. It’s a famous night now still talked about in certain parts of campus. He’s recounted it a dozen times, a hundred times. He’d been half trying to sleep with her roommate, half trying to not sleep with _his_ roommate. Amanda had been stunning wearing nothing but a linen vest and leather pants and she’d said:

“You don’t know anything, buddy. This is just the starting line.”

Before she drives off she finds her spotify account and loads up her own playlist. Molly and Amanda: Family Road trip 2k17.

\--

Molly’s words swim in his head long enough that he contemplates it later that night. He’s already housed Desmond and changed into his customary light sleeping clothes. The motel room is bare, brown, boring. There’s a television but nothing's on. He switches it to a nonsense infomercial channel for the noise. His face is washed and his glasses are off. This is the part of the evening his brain usually reserves for dwelling on his past mistakes or writing future proposals but tonight, as many nights before, it’s littered with thoughts of women better left alone.

It’s a testament to the very strange turn his life has taken these last few years that when his thoughts turn lustful he can bring both his wife and his...Alex to mind. He knows Coralee lives now making biblical thoughts less painful. Alex is also a recent addition, but a pretty, unexpected one. The hand on his stomach slides beneath his sleep pants carefully cupping his balls, rolling them gently until he feels a familiar pull in his belly.

Coralee was like a lightning strike. He lost as often as he won with her and although there was a battle of wills in their relationship she didn’t carry it to bed with her. There’s still a well worn path of memory: the skin between her breasts and her soft belly. He used to bite, to pull at her clean skin until it prickled and she’d laughingly pull him off. It was a fucking lie, in the end, but there’s still something about being balls deep in his wife. His beautiful _wife_ who he made breakfast for, who was _shameless_ about her love of anal play, who tugged him around by his tie. There’s something about truly, deeply fucking her that still tightens him up. Sends blood right to that vein under the head. He slows it all the way down otherwise it could be a few days before he can get it up again.

His hands lie by his side, ignoring the tent in his pants. He breathes in and out. Trying to settle his hips, trying not to think too much about his heartache.

He starts again. Pulls down from the top, twists, and repeats. Harder. Faster. Alex...Alex is...Jesus Christ but Alex is something else. He has to hold on with both hands or he finds himself under her laughing at the stupid way his beard marks her. He has a visceral, gut punching memory of her riding him, her overgrown hair tangled in their fingers she held to her face, her cheek. Unlike him she won’t give without getting. She won’t let the record stand uneven. She’s fearless but cagey. It’s not that she doesn’t connect to him emotionally so much as he glimpses the woman under her mask in her eyes, a woman so sure in her convictions that the mere thought that she should let him sway her is untenable. It doesn’t fit with her world view. Well, if these years have proven anything it’s that karma is a bitch. Richard has waited and wanted for an answer all his life. He’s dedicated his life to getting it. He’s her reflection in that. As much as Alex might fear it, he’s currently her answer -and her question.

It is really, really easy to give into his attraction to her.

Her pretty eyes. Her pretty mouth. That was first. There’s no harm in flirting with a colleague. Especially one he doesn’t share a discipline with. Her remarkable ability to tell him he’s an asshole without ever uttering the words was alluring at first, then damning, and now just a part of something more complicated. He slows down there because it is a purely unarousing thought put that way. He doesn’t _resent_ her, he can’t because he’s never been so far gone as to pretend he didn’t invite her through the door, but he wishes that she might’ve made some different choices.

He groans, head thudding against the pillow. Now _that_ is unarousing.

Her pretty skin that marks easily and he sees so little of. She’s not fond of marks surprisingly. Her openness to experience is matched by his own comfort with his body. He knows now that her reluctance is less disinterest and more the spectre of her one great love, a ghost story and all the heartache that entails. He speeds up. Not because the death of Heather Collins is anything but heart wrenching but because it came with so many small victories. The feeling of her mouth around him. The way her eyes flicked up, the way she sucked harder and longer the more he used her, the more they mutually shed their skins. He can still feel her hot breath on him. The flutter of her eyelashes as he held her hair. Her glazed, undone face as he asked if she was alright.

“Fucking Christ.” He can _feel_ her around him blending with a thousand smiles and too few kisses. He can feel her swallow him compulsively. He can _hear_ the slide of spit and the sound of his balls hitting- “Shit.”

His phone goes off. He just finished an orgasm and his phone goes off. Magic.

He wipes off. A thousand little comments come to mind all dashed by the number on the screen.

“I-” He tries to slow his breath down, now panic instead of, uh. “Charlie?”

“Richard.” His daughter’s voice is touched by Italy. “We need- we need to talk. Can you get here or should I fly back?”

“I’ll come to you.” Which is neater than saying _if you needed me to I would burn down everything I have left._ “When, or how should we-”

“Stop. Just stop.” She breathes in. “Richard. I- I think we should take this slow.”

Of course. Of course, he was just getting ahead of himself. “Alright.”

There’s a noise on the other end. She’s pacing. “I mean...I mean I’m going to call you, maybe tomorrow as well? If you’re not busy-”

“I’m driving across the country with a great dane. I assure you I have nothing but time.” Oh fuck. That’s too much information. “Really. It’s quite boring between Desmond and my prehistoric phone. Not even solitaire.”

“What.” Charlie hesitates but in a rush of the bluster he remembers from decades ago, she carries on. “No. Actually. That needs an explanation.”  

Richard laughs, rubs a hand over his face, and has the first conversation in twenty years with his daughter.

\--

Desmond looks at him with baleful eyes as Richard straps him in the next morning. The big dog lies down with a huff and rests its huge head on its paws. He can’t be mean to the dog, that’s the sign of a true mad man, but good god they can’t both be world weary old men resigned to their fates. Someone in this car has to an optimist. He goes through a fast food place, repeats that he _is_ serious about his coffee order, syncs his new phone with the very modern music system and lets Molly and Amanda’s playlist flood the car. Outside the weather turns peaceful, the warm coloured clouds spread across the sky. For once the oncoming dawn feels like a new day might actually begin.


	2. I Could Be Your Friend, If You Had Anything to Offer Me Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If ignorance is bliss; then knowing will be the death of me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally about how Richard has friends and now a dog. Then the up and down of season three happened so now it's about why he went to Italy bc my brain would not shut up about it. WHY DID HE GO TO ITALY SAZZ. WHY DID HE DO GO TO ITALY. So this is now a story about why this old white guy went to italy. Thanks brain.

“Uh, Alex’s phone?” Nic Silver answers distractedly. “Alex Reagan. Of Pacific Northwest Stories.”

“Nic.” He loosens his grip on the wheel. At a day or two of driving away from home he suddenly realised he needed to check in with Alex. She tends to take radio silence as a sign she needs to escalate her violation of his privacy. He’s genuinely terrified of where they could possibly go from here. “I need to talk to Alex. Desmond don’t bark at the trucks!”

“Sure. Gimme a sec-” Nic’s voice shuffles and fades in the tell tale way of someone moving around a busy space.  _ Excuse me, scoot over, hey how are you!  _ “So I heard you’re driving across the country.”

“That’s correct.”

“With a dog?” Nic hums. “I know that pain.”

Richard drums his fingers against the wheel, impatient. 

Look, Nic is going to get murdered behind an abandoned 7/11 at some geographical site that is famous on three conspiracy blogs for its tenuous connection to a supernatural force, possibly by Cameron Ellis (who acquired the personal details of all Nic’s colleagues when he went missing, and whom Richard told to fuck off without saying the words) or by any number of people who got his address off a deep web message board that was, technically, about quinoa. Richard will be very sad at the funeral, and he truly likes the man, but he wouldn’t exactly call him for life advice, or any advice that has anything to do with the world outside TANIS. He has now listened to the first season, he has questions, the most pressing one being  _ why on earth Paul and Terry are okay with their journalists doing this shit.  _

But if they were more circumspect he wouldn’t have Alex. 

Christ. 

Nic opens a door to a cacophony of background noise. Three voices, all women, a printer, a bird call- “What? Why- It’s  _ Strand  _ Alex will you just-” Nic groans. He hears a snatch of Alex’s voice - _ sorry, sorry! I’m late I’ll say hi for you- _ then the silence of her rushing footsteps. He has an unfortunate pavlovian response to that noise, indigestion and heart ache. “Sorry. I asked her to pick something up from MK and they’re like obsessed with each other.”

Richard rubs his sternum. “That’s fine. Just ask her to get in contact with Ruby. As well as to send some stuff on to Charlie. My phone isn’t allowing me to email attachments.”

“Don’t you have an iphone?”   
“I did.” He says with immense patience. “That was before Thomas Warren turned it into a lawn ornament.”

“Oh. I could ask MK to fix it?” 

“No.” He knows who MeerKatnip is now and thank you but enough people are recording him without his explicit permission. “I’ll just get another one.”

“Okay. Cool. I’ll let her know?”

“Thank you.” 

He hangs up. Hands off talking is both a blessing and a curse. He can talk to empty air all day and all night, that is, after all, what giving introductory lectures is and lord knows he is not above teaching a foundations course. What he doesn’t have the luxury of is guessing people’s body language. Over the years he’s come to terms with the fact that he apparently doesn’t read people well. No matter how many times he insists that  _ that  _ is the result of humanity’s general inability to stick to a reasonable level of emotionality. 

Coralee, in her kinder moments, said that he saw the world as an infinite prism of  _ things that should be.  _ Coralee, in her cruelty, also said that his suppression of anything he couldn’t dissect severed his ability to empathise.

He’s never asked Alex. She’d probably find a polite way of calling him an asshole.

He doesn’t have a wide range of close friends and most of those accept his  _ severed ability to empathise  _ as a quirk of his intelligence. Like Salim’s dazed, listless journey through life. Amanda’s abruptness. Camilla and Charles and their awful Florida home. Those who think are excused from the constraints of those who don’t. It’s a chewy thought. One that hits up against things as big as the circumstances he was born into and as small as, well, the circumstances he was born into. 

Desmond happily pees on a roadside toilet stop as Richard thoughtfully chews a sandwich. Roast beef. He gives the other half to the dog. His phone buzzes and he takes a moment to centre himself before he reaches it. Alex, maybe. Charlie, unlikely, all though he has a kernel of hope. Ruby, most likely, or someone from the academic side of his life. He pours out half a bottle of water into a bowl for Desmond and reads the message.    

_ Heard you were up my way. Coffee? - Virgil. _

\--

Virgil was his site buddy on an ill thought out joint research trip to Jerusalem between the religion and the anthropology departments. Richard was actually doing his psychology degree at the time but Virgil snuck him along anyway. He was the lone person to not piss off the head of the anthro team on their first day and thereby be subject to his occasionally violent whims. Like not being invited to pertinent dinner meetings. Or not being told very specific customs. Or not being told not to shake that specific mans hand. Virgil carried on with determined bluster. Being shunned by the locals and almost getting kidnapped was less interesting than seeing the place he’d studied so ferociously firsthand. 

Although Virgil still maintains the thing with the blue drinks was an assassination attempt. As the person who watched Walther Jones, head of Yale’s anthropology department, pour the drinks, Richard has to agree. 

Many people would poison Virgil Sommerset. 

Sommerset House is a gutted eighteen eighties monstrosity made of the old workhouse Virgil Sommerset the First probably ran illegally. In the early nineties Virgil the Third turned half of it into a truly ugly apartment and what was left into an art gallery for the lower classes. Richard remembers standing on the completely glass third floor, holding Coralee’s glass so she could concentrate on not exposing herself to the party below, when Charlie slipped on an ice puddle and went ass over tea kettle right for the thin barrier between them and empty air. He threw himself at Charlie and took a slash across the knees for the trouble, hitting the invisible safety ledge hard enough that his back still aches. Up until the day Coralee walked away from him, Charlie maintained it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen. Whatever has since taken over that spot...well.  

Desmond whines in the backseat. 

Virgil continued his assault on good taste by buying a large property on a corner lot. The house is victorian with clear additions and renovations including repainting the front facade an ugly bruise colour. The front garden is in a perfect english garden style, cottage paths and late blooming flowers, leading up to a puce coloured door. It is, in a few words, the ugliest house he has seen in decades. 

The front garden is full of small tables and people. A few women in cocktail dresses lurk with wine glasses. Men in suits attend them. Richard checks, it’s just before eleven in the morning.

_ This  _ is why everyone hates Virgil.

A stocky, well muscled man slides toward the iron wrought gates, his golden hair standing up in the tufts. With a patrician nose and slightly close set grey eyes he’s striking without losing a single ounce of power. He grins. Richard offers an answering smirk sliding out of the car. He rolls down the window for Desmond. 

“Well old friend,” Virgil announces in his dark booming English voice. “You have just missed breakfast.”

And  _ this,  _ is why Coralee always badgered him into accepting Virgil’s invites, he is nothing if not gregarious. “I ate on the road.”

“I am truly sorry.” Virgil’s eyes don’t  _ quite  _ sparkle. “That can’t have been enjoyable.”

As the exchange pleasantries Richard plays his new favourite game:  _ What Would Alex Reagan Think?  _ Virgil is an elegant man who has only recently downgraded from extremely handsome. Perhaps not  _ sexy James Bond  _ but nothing to brush off. He and Virgil have always shared the same humor and diligent attention to detail, perhaps that  _ enigmatic  _ quality she and Nic so admire. She would see his coldness, he thinks, the way he thinks of people as bit players in his own life. With enough time maybe she’d see what he had far, far too late. 

She is rather too open to suggestion. In all likelihood she’d see what the people on his lawn see: a manicured gentleman with too much time and money. 

“I have a favor to ask.” Virgil starts the moment his hosting duties are done. “A friend of mine needs a lift and I can not simply leave.” He gestures to the guests on the lawn. Richard spies the pale grey hair of Dr. Yashimo and Dr. Button. Both well respected in their fields and holds his ire in his jaw. Goddamit. 

“Up to old tricks?” He murmurs.

Virgil smiles. “I don’t think you’ve been introduced to Yumiko or Alan? Your work might be  _ interesting, _ ” Virgil pats him affectionately on the shoulder, “not the recent stuff. That would be passe.”

“I need no introduction.  _ Doctor  _ Yumiko and I recently talked at the conference in Vancouver. I assume you missed it for work?”

“Presenters were required to bring a recent paper. As you know I haven’t  _ dabbled  _ since I earned my last doctorate.”

Good god he has missed a lot of things about academia but this is not one of them. It’s the worst kind of country club. He goes to say something and then dismisses it. If Yashimo and Button want to work with someone as ethically wobbly as Virgil Sommerset more joy to them. You only need to make the mistake once.  

A woman cuts from the crowd, tall, resplendent in a practical outfit of jeans and a blouse. A couple passes her to gain her attention. Virgil sighs, the full bodied way of a man looking at something he holds in awe.    

The eurocentric ideal of beauty that praises paleness and purity over all is false for many reasons. One: Charlie’s mother remains one of the most beautiful women he’s ever slept with, flightiness adise. And two: the contrast between skin of snow, hair of coal and lips of blood is in actuality horrifying.  

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Virgil says _ sotto voce _ . Richard hums. In general he prefers women who cast a shadow and can smile without their gums bleeding. Virgil glances at him smugly mistaking his silence for jealousy. 

The women disengages from the couple. Virgil slides smoothly to cradle her arm like the southern gentleman he is to escort her over. “This is-”

“Don’t spoil it.” The woman says. She has startling green eyes. Acid green. Forest green. They match the rest of her colouring. “We have time to get to know each other.”

Virgil stumbles. “Oh.” He smiles to recover, tucking the woman more firmly against his side. “Yes. She  _ prefers  _ to use a pseudonym. This week is-”

“Archie.” She holds out a slim many ringed hand. Her skin is cool to the touch. “You’re Doctor Strand, right?” He flexes his hand twice when she lets go. “Virgil? Are you joining us?”

Virgil licks his lips. “Not this time. No.”

“I’m lost.” Richard manages to turn it down from a snarl. 

“Well, after you catch up.” He gestures to the party. “It would be lovely if you could drive Archie where she needs to go.”

“Are you serious?”

“Richard,” Virgil starts sadly, “when I heard you were coming down I simply had to take the opportunity.”

“To do what, Virgil?” Richard says with real heat. “Have me drive your friend around?” 

“I’m sorry, he said it would be fine.” Archie places her hand on his. A buzzing feeling starts behind his eyes. “It would be, wouldn’t it?”

“I-”

“Richard,” she says, “would you please take me where I need to go?”

“Yes.” Richard hears himself say. “Of course.”

Archie beams at him. 

The next half hour is oppressive. He talks about seemingly nothing but all the time he feels Archie’s eyes on him, Virgil’s attention. Yumiko is lovely, as always, and she introduces the mousy Alan Button as her partner on her newest venture. The room seems to almost spin, a lack of hydration obviously. Everyone but him drinks a lot of wine but when it passes his nose it smells -wrong. Not of this world. Like crushed berries and blood. He takes one sip after a lot of badgering and immediately regrets it. It tastes like nothing at all.

Eventually Virgil drags him into a conversation about his current work translating an old tablet he found in the middle east. Why Yumiko, who works cross speciality on religion and neurology, is so intertwined in Virgil’s work he doesn’t know. 

Alan drops his drink. Virgil reaches over and grabs his hand, touching him with a gentleness that belies the calculating gleam in his eye. Yumiko also flushes following the touch of his hand like a lover. 

Ah. Yes. The Virgil Sommerset method. Three parts seduction. One part plausible deniability. The result:  a whole history of broken hearts, stolen work and nowhere to for resolution.

Archie sneaks up behind him. She places a cool hand on his elbow.  “I’m ready if you are.”

At the car Virgil makes a show of murmuring lovingly to Archie. The whole party stops, their attention riveted on the two of them. The music stops. The birds stop singing. The party goers don’t so much as blink. 

“I’ll miss you.” Virgil even looks like he means it. He fixes Richard with an enigmatic look. “It hasn’t been  _ all  _ bad has it, my friend?”

Before he can reply Virgil turns with a sunny smile, the party cracks from their solemn demeanor.

“Don’t worry about him,” Archie murmurs as they get in the car. Richard has an overwhelming sense that he is doing something wrong, something dangerous, but as soon as the thought comes he is overwhelmed by the smell of that drink. Suddenly he is very thirsty. He puts his seatbelt on instead of thinking about it.     

From the backseat Desmond turns his big head and lets out a bone rattling growl.  

“You have a dog.” She narrows her eyes. “You have a  _ guardian  _ dog.”

He opens his mouth but the cloying smell of that  _ damn  _ drink combines with Desmond’s low growling. It takes real concentration to get them onto the road. He starts driving somewhere, all he knows is that he has to get on an empty road. The feeling is so strong, so reminiscent of something he’s felt before that he shivers. 

“What,” he manages after he finds an empty road. It can’t be more than mid-afternoon but the sun is fading, the visibility reduced to the flash of signposts and road reflectors. His sense of unease skyrockets. “Did he promise you?”

“Virgil?” Archie asks. 

“Or whomever you work for.”

Archie stares at him like he’s grown a second head but she doesn’t deny anything. 

“Thomas Warren? Tiamat? The Cult of the Cenaphus?” He presses. “Ring a bell?”

She blinks. “No, Doctor. Whatever other  _ agents  _ may be pursuing you, I am not among their number.” She tilts her head to a near ninety degree angle. “Would you like me to be?” 

He cuts his eyes away from him, mouth a thin line.

“Richard, and I intend to call you  _ Richard,  _ let’s play a game.” Archie purrs. "If you win I promise to leave you unharmed."  


“No.”

“Don’t play coy.” She places a perfectly manicured hand on his thigh. “I’m not a woman with a lot of patience.”

Desmond growls. Archie sits back as if burned. 

He smirks. “You were saying.”

Archie matches him smirk for smirk. “Can you take your hands off the steering wheel?”

Technically he could but there is a mammalian instinct in his head shrieking not to, to run, to play her game and win because the other option is too horrifying for his human brain to communicate. Try as he might he can’t fight it off. “No.” 

"Well then I guess you said _yes._ " She sighs, resting her feet on the dashboard. It’s an obscene mockery of Charlie in their first car, too young to understand why it annoyed him when she mouthed off, too old to get away with it.

“Take your feet off the dashboard.”

Archie blinks, green eyes flicking like a lizards. “I see.” Her feet hit the floor quietly. “Virgil did say...”

“What?”

“That you would be a difficult meal. Too quick by half but suffering from a lethal dose of the hubris that ‘white male academics of a certain vintage’ get away with.” She frowns, introspective. “I think he intended it as an insult but he was far too pleased to count in their number.”

“Maybe.” Richard says mulishly. He  _ is  _ a white male academic of a certain vintage but he’s not Virgil fucking Sommerset. "And you are?"

"A demon."

"Right."

"Don't sound so suspicious. You  _asked me_ if I was one."

"I asked you if you..." He swears. "Never mind."

"I eat people Richard." Archie smiles at him pleasantly. "There? Is that better?"

He swallows.  

“Hmm.” Her face seems to -split open, but it’s only in the flash of passing lights that he can see the four eyes and their matching mandibles. When he blinks and the lights of passing signs stop spinning she is solemn and green eyed. “Virgil thinks I’m not going to eat him. Silly. Eventually I will eat all men.”

Richard stops breathing.

“But not you, I suppose.” She sighs. “No if I played this straight I'd go hungry. Too suspicious by half. Too clever as well. Plus the dog....well, I like easy meals. You could give me the woman.”

“Alex?”

“No. That’s the  _ girl.  _ A maiden’s spirit, that one. I mean the woman. The one with the stone heart and the magician’s hands.”

“Coralee.” He clarifies. “No. Never.”

“Didn’t you go crazy? With longing, with lust, with worry? You are a singular, solitary force, why would you carry her around with you?”

“No.”

“You don’t love her anymore.” Archie queries. “Not like that. And what did Salim say:  _ love is your only settler. _ ”

“Where you at the funeral?” He scowls. “What, did I refuse to give you feedback thirty years ago?”

“Thirty years ago I was hunting a group of humans across Argentina so, no, I don’t think so.” She leans across the small space. Desmond’s growls don’t stop her. “I’m a demon, Richard. Can’t you feel it?”

“No.” He says to himself. “You’re a crazy person I’m stuck in a car with.”

She sighs and rearranges her  _ two legs  _ and not the  _ four  _ his brain is insisting on adding. There are only  _ two  _ legs because six on the dashboard is unreasonable. “You’re a strange one. If you don’t love her why would you die for her?”

“If you kill me it’s because you decide to,” he points out, “ _ not  _ because you’re an all knowing figment of religious delusions. I don’t owe you an answer.”

She crosses her arms mulishly. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

Death is skirting close to a pleasant vacation from his actual life. Twenty years alone. Twenty more in front of him. His family left him a long time ago, his work will live on without him. What does he actually have to lose? 

“You have nothing to lose,” she whispers. “You’re too stubborn to die though. What a situation. I’ll ask again: why would you die for Coralee?”

“I wouldn’t.” It’s bloody in his mouth: a truth too painful to express. What is love you wouldn’t die for? What is loyalty you wouldn’t fight for? “I wouldn’t. Not anymore. But I won't give her up either.”

“Ever determined too inconvenience yourself. You wouldn't die for Alex either. Or from losing her.” Richard presses his lips together, searching for something other than rage to fight back with. He wouldn’t, not anymore. She waves away her words with a flicker of fingers. “No, don’t. Twenty years is a long time. You wouldn’t die for your beliefs no matter how comforting you might find the notion. Why did Virgil feed you to me. No. Don’t answer that. He’s an idiot.” She huffs. “This is  _ annoying  _ Richard.”

He grinds his teeth together. This is annoying for  _ her? _

“Well I have to do something.” She leans over, there’s that flickering of passing light and this time her breath smells like basement water, her eyes are beetle shells. “You could set me on an enemy. When I’m done with that I can come back and eat you for your hubris. It’ll take a week. More than enough time to get a last hurrah in.”

“No.”

“Are you capable of saying something else?”

He bares his teeth. “ _ No. _ ”

“I’ll tell you what happened to Sebastian.” He flinches. Archie laughs. “Oh, there it is. Curiosity. The binds of flesh and heart may fail you but the search for something to believe never will.”

With as little space as there is in the car he still manages to turn away. 

“You could have both, you know,” she croons. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Lonely. Painful when it isn’t. Just give in-”

“To what?”

“To belief. Or to absence. You can’t spend your whole life on the fence. Commit to one side of the debate. Believe and fight back with  _ what you know  _ is inside you. Or cast it aside and refuse to so much as entertain the possibility. Your need to disprove is your undoing here because sweetheart,” Archie rests her chin on his shoulder. Her neck seems to have just  _ extended _ . His hands tighten on the wheel, “either I’m a demon about to eat you or I’m just the crazy bitch here to kill you. Stop worrying about whether or not your mind is playing tricks on you and start worrying about  _ me  _ who is definitely here to do so.”

“I don’t believe.” 

“ _ Liar. _ ”  

“Fine.” He wrenches his head around. With her chin on his shoulders there’s millimetres separating them. Desmond barks and barks and barks but from this close the only thing he can see is the acid of her eyes. “What’s your fucking rubric? Where’s the fucking burden of proof? You sit there from your high horse of absolutism. Belief or absence. But the world is founded on argument. Civilization is created on science. Unproven absolutes are the antithesis of progress-”

“What was the last thing your mother ever said to you? Before the weight of your father’s betrayals ate her whole?”

“ _ Fuck  _ you.”

“No.” She hisses. “You don’t get to reframe the argument. There’s you and me in the car. I believe. I’m here to hurt and maim and rend the unholy. I’m here to bring about an impenetrable darkness, to drown out the creations of light. I am proof and product of a higher evil. You can build your castles of reason to cover up the blood that doubt built, but at the end of the day the blood is on the ground.” She leans back, croves her spine and hunches her shoulders. “Be honest. Do you believe? Or is this all just the work of a great absence? All you’ve done is talk circles around yourself.”

It’s like her words make it real. He can see the castle on bloody ground. Tall walls built of grey stones bound by the pages of books. One single door the same colour as his childhood home. The smell of his mother’s cooking wafting out like a warning sign:  _ here is the beginning. A point of all returns.  _ Rooms spring and fade as quick as the memories that make them. Alex laughing in the snow. His Institute and Ruby on an early Easter morning. A dozen conferences. Sneering at DuMont over the phone. Writing his book on a late summer evening bare to his underclothes. Coralee by the road. Coralee in bed. Coralee feeding him wedding cake. Charlie as the tough, soft thing she was when she was born. Dozens of lights go out in the rooms, as they go by on the road, faster and faster. His father and leather. His sister and water. That poor boy who had to die so Richard could learn that monsters are real enough to hurt you, even if they’re called  _ wasting diseases  _ and  _ emotional trauma.  _

A friend. In the dark. He taught a too young boy how to rip open the skin of reality and tear out the viscera of the universe. A father who stood by, watched the carnage, and did nothing.

The castle stands on it’s own because it must. He must stand. And it has been alone. The truth can’t change but he can hide it where it can do as little damage as possible. The world jitters, noise in his ears like a skipping record.       

“I believe.” His hands are white on the wheel. “I don’t want to. But I have no choice.”

“Did that hurt?” 

He growls. “Yes.”

“Good.” She swipes across his lips to gather the blood. He can see the pink of her tongue as she licks it off. “The debt is paid. Now I can go back to killing Virgil.” 

“Why don’t you just put him through this instead?”

She looks at him. With open eyes he sees something profane. Moving shadows, shards of light that hurt, green eyes in a mask of hate and beauty and terror. A droll, unwelcome thought points out that she at least has the decency to keep all her features where they should be. She smiles. “Because that would be too easy.”

The dark of the road shreds in front of his eyes. The cool air of the Pacific Northwest fills the car. 

“Where-”

“I sped us up.” Archie stretches and exits the car. They’re parked by a walking trail, other cars are in the parking lot, people are stretching in their workout gear. “It’s been interesting Richard -did you know that Nora intended to call you Alexander? She wanted a warrior son, to survive the father I suppose- and illuminating. I’ll eat you later. Or maybe not at all. Time will tell.”

There is no way- That is  _ against the laws of physics.  _

She knocks on his window. Her hair is changing colour, softening to brown curls. The green of her eyes is mottled. “Richard?” She smiles. It’s a nice smile. “Pick your daughter. You have a talent for loving women with convictions, but a man only has so many chances with his children and Charlotte is far from a wicked spirit.”

And Archie leaves.

Music comes stuttering through the speakers. He sits in the car for a few moments gathering himself. Ther parking lot looks familiar although he can say he’s never been here. A van full of sketchy looking people in dark clothes skids into the parking lot. They disembark with a load of equipment that looks passingly scientific, even if they would be better suited to an eighties very special episode. He exits the car, lets the dog out too, and goes in search of something that will tell him where he is. The sign is half broken off obscuring the name. He drops a pin in google and brings up the search. The first result is for a half marathon. The second for a restaurant. The third is for a series of creepy murders involving ritual sacrifice to an unnamable demi-god-  

Oh god. This place is on the Tanis newsletter Alex subscribed him to. 

Nic Silver strolls out of the woods with his dog on a bright blue leash. Richard has the curious idea of falling, Alice down a wormhole style, towards the realisation that the green eyed woman is  _ also  _ subscribed to Nic’s creepy Tanis related newsletter.

Desmond heaves himself, wearily, to his feet and plods over to sniff Nic’s poodle. After a few moments Desmond returns with all indications that the coast is clear. 

Nic waves. “Hey!” He pulls his earphones out. “Great to see you! I lost my ride can I-”

He can. Obviously.  

Richard takes a moment to compose himself at the steering wheel. It’s both a companion and a crutch after the last passenger in his car. Nic frowns. He clarifies, “I have had...a day.”

The friendliness comes back. “I didn’t realise you were so close! It’s been barely a day and a half.”

It’s been somewhere between forty years and fifteen minutes for Richard, but he doesn’t want to share and Nic’s eyes have glazed over. Both dogs curl up in the back seat and huff. Nic seems to realize he’s being his version of rude. “Whose mix is this?”

“A friend.” It seems safe to call Molly that. “I was about to switch it off.”

“Here let me-” Nic pulls it off the cord and starts swiping. Richard holds back his sigh. Nic’s taste run towards the moody indie PNWS’s theme songs. He has no reason as far as Richard knows to have adopted garishly overproduced guitars and limited but evocative vocals as a style choice which puts him in the awful position of genuinely enjoying it.   

And then The Communards  _ Don’t Leave Me This Way _ starts playing. 

Richard openly frowns. “What’s this?”

“This is Alex’s party mix.” Nic smiles, it has slightly too many teeth to be a shit eating grin although it clearly wants to be. Maybe it’s being trapped in a car with a woman threatening to eat him but everything about Nic is currently setting off his fight or flight reflex. Maybe it’s that it is a rare sunny Seattle day and Nic somehow smells like sweet churned earth, too rich and too deep to be a human made scent.

Or maybe, he allows, he is stressed and tired.  

Desmond sneezes, ears pinned back and barks twice. He sneezes again and nudges Nic’s poodle. The poodle curls into a tighter ball. Desmond looks at Richard significantly  _ we have a problem, what are going to do about it?  _ Richard drives, because he is not beholden to a canine. The playlist transitions to one of Alex’s preferred girl grunge bands. Without meaning to he starts drumming out the beat. Nic lives relatively close to Alex so he needs no instructions on how to get to the right part of town. He turns into a sudden fall of rain, a sudden disappearance of open sky. He breathes in fresh air and breathes out what feels like a lungful of dirt. His throat clogs up, his eyes sting and he has the wild impulse to look - _ don’t look Richie-  _ at Nic. Nic Silver is smiling, the impression of a hooked mask hanging over his face, the smell of aromatics in the air. Something is smiling too, sitting just behind his eyes. On his shoulder a many fingered hand taps out the tune. 

Desmond barks again.  _ See? Next time listen to me. _

Nic laughs. “So do you actually like this band or are you hostage to Alex’s mixtape collection too-” He stops smiling. “What?”

With extreme effort Richard wipes off whatever expression he was making. “Nothing. Just tired.”

Nic smiles but the conversation is done. The rest of the drive is only punctured by soft grunge.  

Nic goes into his apartment with that large green presence squashing the life out of everything else, pushing on Nic’s mind like a sieve. Richard blinks and his vision clears. With a sigh he presses shuffle on Alex’s playlist again and calls the whole day a net loss. 

\--  

His home is dark, foreboding and cold. More or less what home always is. He stops by the land line answering machine, only present because a number of his contacts eschew mobiles, to twenty three missed calls. He checks the date, he’s only been gone a week or so. He listens to the first one and sighs, pressing the numbers to call back. 

“If you don’t want to talk to me, Richard-” Charlie starts nastily. 

“That’s not it at all. I started the day with Virgil Sommerset and only just got home.”

“Oh.” Charlie had the great misfortune to be babysat by Virgil until she was twelve. Coralee was unusually fond of him, although subsequent events may have revealed a reason. “So what happened today?”

“I love you Charlotte.”

“Richard- I don’t-”

“It’s not something that requires a reply. You just need to know that. It’s not something that needs a, a thesis or a proof, although you would think I could manage  _ that _ . But it is true. I should have said so, more often.”

Silence, then- “I’m coming to visit.” She hangs up. 

Part of him wishes she wouldn’t. Not until after he can deal with his father’s house. The black tapes. The fact that Alex has left seven messages and that he wants to listen to them more than he wants to sleep. Not until he can remake his  _ castles of reason  _ with the sick seed of belief at the centre. A Richard Strand that believes is not one that can live here, with this. 

Desmond rests his big head on Richard’s foot. In the absence of the supernatural he’s laconic, happiest within easy petting distance or near a stray sunbeam. One probably shouldn’t get their first pet at fifty six but as these things go they’re probably not a bad fit. At a loss he puts his clothes away, dresses down and gets Desmond some water. After the dog is securely lying on the rug by the front entrance he allows himself a breath and a gas of whiskey.   

He pours one out for strange green eyed women too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO. Here is proof that the next chapter, currently titled 'alex and coralee are here and desmond is his only bro' actually exists:
> 
> The landline is situated right at the edge of the living room. From its vantage point he can hear Alex walking around his kitchen in her socks. He can see Coralee lean against the open door of his study in her boots. She pushes her white blonde hair over her shoulder and waits with the second line in her hand. He answers the phone.  
> “Mr, uh, Dr Strand you probably don’t remember me but I was Charlie’s friend-”  
> From the doorway he sees Coralee mouth Caroline.
> 
> And [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/carpebooty/playlist/22GaVaxOiVSCbFR1ua3xQn) is a playlist because I am predictable. As always I add and move songs as I feel.  
> I am probably going to come back and edit but I've just been sitting on this so.

**Author's Note:**

> Now, in the serious section. This was going to be a one off but I wrote a section wherein Strand discusses dog care, TANIS and Alex with Nic Silver which is such. A Disaster that it is too late to stop me. Plus Coralee just doing her type things. Just being the best presumed dead wife she can be. 
> 
> Probably he nearly gets knifed by a roadside eldritch monster, the day is young. Metaphorically.
> 
> I do however need to know what is on Strand's road trip playlist. I truly need to know.


End file.
